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After publicly stating their opposition to wireless rules favouring Verizon, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) union, which has 110,000 members, has now demanded Ottawa investigate how Verizon could affect national security, based on one small part of the Canada Investment Act, which calls on the Industry Minister to evaluate and review any potential national security concerns when a foreign company enter Canada:

“Canadians need to know that their government is reviewing Verizon’s potential threat to national security, and what steps the U.S. company will have to take to mitigate any concerns,” says CEP President Dave Coles. “In their bid to woo Verizon, we hope the Harper government isn’t ignoring its responsibility to do a security review.”

The CEP details how Verizon was implicated in the National Security Agency (NSA) PRISM program and also cites the company’s “close” involvement with the U.S. military. Further scenarios include Verizon handing over personal information of Canadians if asked under the U.S. Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The CEP says boycotting Verizon won’t allow you to “sleep easy either”, because you’re never going to ever be safe if the company enters Canada since it will be able to use shared incumbent networks:

“Canadians who boycott Verizon out of fear that their personal information could be delivered to U.S. authorities will not necessarily be able to sleep easy either,” says Coles. “The government’s mandatory access rule gives Verizon the right to use the major Canadian telecom companies’ wireless networks, which currently carry some of the country’s most secure and private communications.”

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LOL, They should actually investigate the other Telecos in Canada, because they often give information based on investigations. They are fools if they think that any of our networks are even remotely secure, or that Rogers and Bell don’t cooperate fully with Canadian and international governments when it comes to terrorism. Its also part of some of our agreements with international criminal investigations like INTERPOL. People think that Prism is something that actively hacks into network, that would take enormous computational abilities, but what it does to is correlate data, and that data is given, by either court order, or cooperative relationships with companies. So sure, you should look out for international spying, but internally we all assume that companies don’t give our data to governmental agencies and while publicly they may say its so, its become more and more evident that its easy to put pressure on any company to play ball in secret. And do you think this is anything other then a ploy by Robellus?

I guess Ting was going to give state secrets as well, because none of the incumbents wanted to share networks with them. Hummm wonder if they are spying for Canada then?

1His_Nibs1

Hey CEP…..if you’re so “concerned” about Canadians privacy & rights where is your “concern” over Bell & Telus using Huawei’s equipment? Or is the spectre of Americans spying on Canadians more ominous than the Chinese? GTFO already!

Chrome262

yeah at least Verizon “gave” the data to the NSA. With Huawei tech there is no asking lol